I certainly see the value in Open Source (and I support it myself), but I believe there is a point where advocacy can go beyond reason. To me, for the most part software is about functionality, not (usually) about philosophy -- I will use the software that works best ...

I agree. I'm a BIG fan of open source but you can't punish yourself by limiting yourself ONLY to open source. For example, I don't use my Linux box for many of my computing needs. Because of functionality issues. And I have been following the FreeDOS project for a couple of years now. In a few years it MIGHT be as functional as MS DOS was TEN YEARS AGO.

Open source just means that you can see the source code. To my mind, this is a key point for open knowledge.
On the other hand, free software is a philosophical thing where you believe that every software should be totally free (both in price and freedom), and reject "non-free" software.

MPC is in a slightly different category -- you might not be able to *encode* in the future, but you will at least be able to *decode*.

Sorry for getting horribly offtopic, but here is another thing that I've been pondering about.

Consider that, for example, for such and such reasons MPC developers all switch to Windows systems and nobody really works on Linux anymore.

Now they add feature X, which isn't supported by my Linux decoder of choice (the XMMS plugin).

Who's going to add it? How many people can make such plugins and grind down the MPC source code?

Same example, but XMMS is deprecated and a new app gets to be the standard Unix player, with a different plugin system. Of course, due to changes in the the Linux OSS layer, XMMS no longer works.

Another example:

Say that all Vorbis developers get sued for whatever, and corporate America being what it is, they all get locked up in jail.

Then, Intel/AMD's 64-bit CPU comes out at $1 a piece, everybody buys one. And you try to get your Ogg decoder compiled on it.

But it won't work. There's an incompatibility between the Ogg source and the new compiler for that CPU.

Who's going to fix it for you? Everybody in the know is in jail.

I realize this may all sound farfetched, but my point is that you should not really count on being able to work with those old files unless someone is actually actively supporting it.

I know a company that is currently massively screwed in a similar way. They were selling DOS apps. Hey, it was DOS, but the app was very good in what it did. But MS totally dropped DOS support in Windows XP. They may have the source to their app, their still screwed.

Originally posted by Gabriel Just a personal comment: open source is different from free software.

I believe in open source, but not in free software.

Open source just means that you can see the source code. To my mind, this is a key point for open knowledge.
On the other hand, free software is a philosophical thing where you believe that every software should be totally free (both in price and freedom), and reject "non-free" software.

As an example, Lame is open source, but not free software.

A point which I'd like to make is that open source is in no way a guarantee for open knowledge. Patents will stop that. (MS 'shared' source anyone?)

Free source OTOH (at least the GPL) will ensure that you can use the knowledge without fear of patents.

(This is also the reason why LAME being GPL is 'questionable', to say the least. As far as I understand you can only use it for 'educational purposes', i.e. to learn or experiment with MP3 encoding)

You're right, and so Lame is LGPL.
Remember that the lgpl only covers the source code, in the same way a copyright protect a book.
Lgpl doesn't say anything about the algorithms, in the same way a copyright on a book doesn't cover the ideas exposed into the book.

So the lgpl protect the way the algorithms are written, but absolutely not the algorithms themselves.

And yes, open source gives you access to knowledge. But it doens't means that you'll be able to use this knowledge freely.
Lame source code offers knowledge, but you're right, you can't use this knowledge freely.